Diversifying and strengthening our research funding
We invested £103m in world leading research during 2025 and 2026, while also transforming many of our funding schemes - lifting caps, strengthening support for promising scientists, and setting the stage for a more ambitious funding approach.
Bringing researchers together to tackle major challenges
Being more strategic and leveraging additional funding has been a major focus. For example, we invested £10m in the BHF Data Science Centre to expand highly secure research access. We also launched a new Cardiovascular Grand Challenge designed to bring researchers together to tackle problems too big for any one team.
Through the Grand Challenge, we expect to make at least one award of up to £10 million, under the theme of using AI to revolutionise advances in cardiovascular health.
Building ambitious partnerships and leveraging funding
We contributed £5m to a $55m global research programme on women’s heart health, led by Wellcome Leap, with support from Melinda French Gates’ Pivotal.
In addition, and we refreshed our PhD programme, leveraging £23m against our investment by ensuring universities and partners also contributed funding. These investments reflect our ambition to power even more discoveries in future.
Powering lifesaving discoveries
Alongside these new investments, many of our existing funded researchers delivered breakthroughs that could shape the future of cardiovascular care, including using AI to identify people at risk of heart failure in seconds, and strengthening the evidence on statin safety.
